February 05, 2014

Ancestral Air Produced Ancestral Maize

A wild grass from Mesoamericacalled teosinte is accepted as the ancestor of maize/corn, but it does not look much like varieties of corn we know:

How teosinte looks today. (Wiki Commons)

The vegetative and flowering structures of modern teosinte are very
different from those of corn. These and other differences led to a
century-long dispute as to whether teosinte could really be the ancestor
of corn.

“When humans first began to cultivate teosinte about 10,000 years ago,
it was probably more maize-like—naturally exhibiting some
characteristics previously thought to result from human selection and
domestication. The environment may have played a significant, if
serendipitous, role in the transition through inducing phenotypic
plasticity that gave early farmers a head start.”